even though I just milled up a few slabs that will be at least a year before
they're dry enough to actually use so I purchased a few slabs from an
austin-based sawmill called Greenwood milling and made this live edge
waterfall coffee table it's called a waterfall coffee table because you cut a
portion off that turns into the leg but you do it with a miter so that the grain
is continuous from the top to this leg the first step in the process was to
fill in all of the very many cracks that the slab had with epoxy I started off by
flipping the slab over and taping off all of the cracks and holes that I could
see and this is so that whenever you start pouring an epoxy it won't just of
course fall through the other side I use painters tape for this however I
got a lot of recommendations on Instagram when I was doing this that tie
vex tape is actually the better tape for the job it apparently comes off a lot
easier so just keep that in mind if you do this project next was to flip it back
over and start filling in all of these crux and crevasses
for this I'm going with a two-to-one epoxy made by total boat and the
two-to-one number means that it's two-part resin to one part hardener in
each mixture however something I really like about the total boat system is
their pumps are designed to make this a lot easier for you they simplify it to
one pump to one pop and the pump dispenses the two to one ratio for you
after following the directions on the stirrer time I started pouring it in the
cracks and you can see on this end crack that a
once again use painters tape just so that epoxy would have a stopping point
now there are a lot of epoxy choices that you can go with but the total boat
system is very good at self leveling and it's also extremely clear on that note
keep in mind that you could tent the epoxy if you don't want it clear what I
would do is go through and pour in until the crock had an overflowing amount of
epoxy on top of it then I would move on to a different area while that settled
come back with the heat gun to get rid of the air bubbles then once it set a
little bit more I would fill it up again and I would do this until it stopped
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so you have an entire year to utilize it now under flattening it out I started
off with my large random orbital sander and on this triton sander there are two
settings and more aggressive and a more gentle and since I got a lot of epoxy to
remove I put it on the more aggressive setting to start with and this made
really quick work of getting it all leveled out and then I switched it over
to the more gentle setting to run along on the entire live edge okay up next was
cutting in the miter that will drop off the portion of the table that will
become the leg I'll be using my track saw for this and I started off by
getting a square cut on the end of my slab I mean kind of square I don't have
a true reference to get squares so I balled it by using a square against my
track and then lining it up with what looked like a straight line down center
and this will at least get me close so now I can pull two tape references off
of this cut and set up my track in order to now cut the 45
I felt it over my track saw and just to note if you have the Triton saw there is
a foot you can move over into the truck to keep it from falling off the track
whenever you have it at a bevel instead of trying to do it all in one pass I
actually made it in three different passes so I would make a pass set the
depth a little bit deeper make another pass and then repeat and this is the
part that kind of confused me whenever I was looking into this process so I made
you guys a visual reference that's easier to handle than my two large slabs
alright this is the cut that I just made one 45-degree cut if I were to take the
off cut and rotate it at a 90 you can see that the miters don't made up you
would have to flip this off cut around for it to do that but then of course you
would mess up the flowing grain orientation so now I have to make a
second 45-degree cut in order to remove their triangle piece so that it will
made it perfectly to the top and that's the cut that I started setting up for
next the important thing about this cut is to take off as little material as
possible from what will be the outside exposed grain I'm once again using my
tracks all and so I took my time lining up the track as close to the peak of the
cut as I could possibly get it and then I once again took this in three passes
okay with the hardest part done I now started working on joining these two
pieces together for this I'm gonna be using the Triton duo Dowler however I
did take out one of the router bits in order to make it a single Dowler since
my joint here is out of 45 I first set my fence to match and then adjusted the
depth of not only the fence but also the plunge depth be where you are going in
at an angle and you wouldn't want to plunge through your entire workpiece
after getting the tool set up I put together my slabs and marked off where I
wanted the four dowel placements to be cut in up now even though this is a
simple tool to use I still took my time making sure that it was one seated on
the workpiece properly out of 45 and to that both of the fences were flush up
against the workpiece as I was plunging in the bed before laying down any glue
I'm gonna be attaching what's called glue up calls these are gonna be made
out of plywood and use solely to make clamping down on this joint a lot easier
I grabbed a scrap piece of plywood and cut it down the middle at a 45 degree
angle next I took these and glued them to my workpiece with the 45 degree
angles facing away from the joint I didn't have a lot of time to wait on the
glue to dry so for the application I use tight bonds that can quit since it has a
very quick set time while I left that alone to set up for a few minutes I
started working on the dowels any time I'm using a dowel for a joint I always
put in a spiral cut and this is to give the glue some place to go whenever you
put the dowel on the hole so that it won't seize up on you there's a few
different ways to do this but I use the fan saw with my miter gauge set to the
45 and I very gently roll it and push it through the blade at the same time once
the calls were dry I flip the slab over and applied painters tape right up to
both of these 45s and this will prevent a lot of hard cleanup work once the
slabs are actually joined for attaching I personally went with type on two and I
started off by first placing a liberal amount of glue inside each one of the
dowel locations a hammer the dowel Zen covered the rest
of the joint and type on to and then started putting things together and now
you can see how these calls work by cutting both of the outside angles on
the calls to a 45 degree angle which matches the miter joint that I have it
gives me two parallel surfaces to get a clamp in there and use the clamp
strength in order to fully seat and tighten down on this joint I absolutely
love that trick I just think it's so cool after letting that set up overnight
I took off all of the clamps and started working on a cleanup first removing the
tape from that inside 90 degree and then clamping down the workpiece to start
removing those plywood calls one reason for making them plywood is so that you
can share it down one of the layers I found it to work best to use two chisels
and work down the length of the plywood until the entire piece pops off however
it was suggested to me after doing the glue up that you can lay down some
construction paper or even parchment paper or painters tape in between the
call and the swab to make removing this call even more of a cinch
once removing the majority of the call I used the chisel to get rid of the bulk
waste then I came back with a sander to completely clean it up and since I was
sanding I went ahead and sanded the entire piece to finish so I started off
with about 80 to remove the plywood then I went down to 120 then to 20 I cleaned
it up getting all of that fine dust off of it and then I started setting things
up to start finishing the table I'm gonna be finishing both sides and so I
got four bench cookies out with a little pointer step on it and I started off
finishing the inside of the table first after getting the underside coated I
would flip it around use a 2 by 6 in order to prop it up and then I repeated
for the top surface I'm personally using minwax wipe-on poly I love this finish
as I find it the easiest one to not mess up it's very good at self leveling it
doesn't leave a high glossy plastic look to your piece after it's done it's very
quick to dry but it's also very durable as you can see I just pour it directly
on my workpiece and then I'm using two paper towels in order to smear it around
nice and even the bark is a little bit rough in order to get the finish on so I
switched from a paper towel to a rush in order to get into all the nooks
and crannies on that bark now you do gotta wait about two to three hours
before reapplying so while that set up I started working on the other leg for the
table originally I was gonna go with a wooden mesquite trapezoid which atropos
away it is kind of the go-to leg for this style of table I started thinking
about it and I decided to go with a bowtie shaped leg instead not a solid
bowtie but just the outline of one even though i milled some mesquite last week
of course none of it's gonna be dry for another year so I made this leg from
some three-quarter inch square tubing I had I started off by drawing this leg to
its exact size on a piece of construction paper then I took it over
to my metalworking side and started cutting the three-quarter inch tubing to
the size needed and to do this I would I would really cheat I would just place
the three quarter inch tubing down on my drawing and use a squared few mark off
where it needed to be cut in at what angle and this not only worked great but
it also worked very quickly after getting all six of the pieces cut I
first tucked them together and then welded close each joint and i wella them
close not really for strength but just because I wanted to paint the leg and
you'd be able to see an open joint if I didn't woke them close on that same
notion I wanted this to be nice and smooth so next I grabbed a grinder and
grind it down each one of those seams tore at the end of it it looks like the
bowtie was made from one solid piece of metal and just a tip if you end up doing
this you can see that the top and bottom horizontal pieces are on the top of the
vertical pieces in this meant that I needed to cut some pieces and cap off
the ends however if you switch the orientation and make the vertical pieces
extend past the top and bottom then you can avoid this step and the very last
thing I did to the leg welding wise is I cut some very thin flat stock miter the
ends just to give it a little bit nicer of a look and then tacked and welded it
in place as well and this is going to create a wider footprint on the
underside of the table after getting that stuck into place I've used a scrap
piece of wood on my workbench and then drill three holes across the length of
it at this point the first coat of wipe-on
poly was dry on the table so I sanded it all down using 320 grit sandpaper
getting it prepped for the second coat however I couldn't resist attaching the
leg before doing that to see how it looked I used those three hole locations
in the bottom of that flat iron in order to attach it to the bottom side of the
slab but then I continued on with the finishing and total I did three coats of
finish for this table now I made this small coffee table for a chaise lounge
of mine but keep in mind you can do the same process for any table an entryway
table a desk and end table there are no limits it's a relatively quick one but a
very fun one and I have linked to other waterfall table videos in the
description if you're interested in the topic I hope that you've enjoyed this
one I will see you soon